Acts of Mercy (16 page)

“How’s the husband? Still holding on to his cop job?” Sam asked.

“Holding on with everything he has.” Anne Marie dropped her briefcase to the floor with a thud. “But not to worry. We’ll bring him around sooner or later.”

“I’ve been trying to lure Evan to the Bureau for the last few years without success,” John said. “He likes being a detective, so until I can offer him something better …” John shrugged. “Our loss.”

“Sam.” Fiona smiled a greeting. She wore white Capri pants and a black T-shirt and looked very tidy. Casual, but tidy. Sam wondered if she ever looked mussed or if a hair was ever out of place on her pretty head.

“I hope we’re not too early, that you two had time to finish your discussion. We were here with time to spare and were content to sit out in the car for another fifteen or twenty minutes, but the lovely woman who runs this fine home—hard to believe someone actually lives here, isn’t it?—well, she saw us out
there and took pity.” Annie took a seat next to Sam and leaned down to open her briefcase. She took out several files and placed them on the table in front of her. “She forced us to come inside and have iced tea and the most delicious lemon cookies I ever tasted.”

“Ah, you met Trula.” Sam nodded knowingly. “She’s a rare gem.”

“And the little girl, Jill,” Fiona added. “She was darling.”

“You mean Chloe?” Sam asked. “Dark hair, dark skin?”

“Yes, but she said her name was Jill.” Fiona laughed. “But after she went outside, Trula confided that when Chloe found a name she liked, she tried it on for a while. Trula said she does it all the time. Today she’s Jill.”

“She is one funny little kid,” Sam agreed. “Her mom is an investigator here. Emme Caldwell. She was their first hire.”

“So she told us.” Annie opened a file. “Now. Business. Will Fletcher pulled up all your old cases and their dispositions.” She handed Sam a copy of a three-page report. “As you can see, just about every one of these characters who’s still living is still in prison. Most of them divorced, deserted by their families once their horrendous deeds became known. A number of them are dead, either by their own hand, a fellow inmate, or the state. So the field is narrowed considerably.”

“Maybe there’s a copycat, someone who wants to be like one of these guys.” Sam scanned the list.

“You knew them, Sam. Does any name stand out as someone who’d be wanting revenge on you for something?
Anyone there who threatened to ‘make you pay’?”

“Annie, right now, looking at these names, it could be any one of them.”

“So it could just as likely be none,” she replied.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He frowned.

“You’ve been trained to pick out the aberrant. Remember those picture puzzles we used to get in school, where you’d have to look at several pictures and decide which one wasn’t like the others? Well, profiling, as you very well know from your own experience, is often like those picture puzzles,” Annie explained. “You look for the one who isn’t like the others. The one who stands out.” She held up the file. “None of these stood out to you.”

“So?”

“So I’m thinking the guy you’re after isn’t one of these people.”

Sam took another look at the list of names, going from page to page. It had to be one of them.

He paused over one name. “Here. Peter Longacre. Twelve years ago, I testified against him for …” His voice died away as he finished reading the information that followed Longacre’s name. “Oh. Died in the prison infirmary seven years ago.” He continued to check the list. “Well, then, here. This one. Frank Myles.” Sam waved the page. “He was convicted of a double rape and homicide nine years ago. I was the one who tracked him down. You think maybe he might have stored up a little resentment since he started serving those two life sentences? No chance for parole?”

“Sam, have you seen the book,
My Life, Revisited?
It’s been on all the bestseller lists.” Annie folded her arms calmly on the table.

“Sure.” He blinked. “Oh, shit. Frank Myles? He’s
that
Frank Myles?”

Annie nodded. “He’s totally turned his life around. He’s become a minister, counsels the other prisoners.”

Sam started to say something and Annie cut him off. “And yes, I know he isn’t entitled to any of the proceeds from the book, but he doesn’t want the money. He’s donated it all to a charity that provides college money for the children of victims of violent crimes.”

“That could all be bullshit, and you know it,” Sam said.

“It could be. I for one don’t believe it is. I’ve met with him. I’ve talked with him. I think he’s the real deal.”

“Annie, you of all people know how good these guys are at pulling off a con.”

“I do know that. But this time, I think it’s for real,” she insisted. “He has nothing to gain. He’ll never come up for parole. There won’t be any time off for good behavior, and he doesn’t want any. He wants to serve his sentence—his debt, he says—but he’s determined to do what little good he can do while he’s in prison. So no, Sam, I don’t think you have anything to worry about where Frank Myles is concerned.”

Sam sighed. “Okay, so no one pops out at me. That doesn’t mean that someone here”—he tapped on the folder—“isn’t behind the killings.”

“We’ll take a good hard look at each of those people,” John assured him, “but for now, I think we have to look beyond that list.”

“Why don’t you tell Sam what you’re thinking, Annie?” Fiona suggested.

Annie took off her reading glasses and set them on the table. “The fact that the killer has deliberately selected locales that are tied to you, and that he seeks his victims randomly on dates that are anything but random tells us a great deal about him. I’m sure it’s occurred to you that he’s very organized. He’s willing to wait for months to kill again because he needs the date and the place to be right. That tells me he’s patient, that he’s used to having to exercise patience. He has the will power to put off doing what he wants to do until the time and place are what they must be. So I’m thinking we need to go back in time, maybe even before you were with the FBI. Is there anyone back there who might have reason to blame you for something? More specifically, think about who might believe he has cause to blame you for something he himself might have done.”

Sam shook his head. “I can’t think of anyone like that, Annie.”

“Take your time. It could be something very subtle. Hopefully, it will come to you in time, but probably not today, which is fine. We have other things to discuss.” Annie pushed back her chair and stood. Sam knew within seconds she’d start to pace around the room, a habit of hers. She’d once said she thought better when she was moving.

“This latest murder.” Sam’s face went white. “Whoever this person is, he knows the details of my life. Well enough to know that Carly died on August fifteenth. Well enough to know that, even if I missed the
others, killing someone on that date in that particular place is going to get my attention.”

“And that’s what this is all about, Sam. He’s waving a red flag in your face, challenging you.
See me. Find me.”

“Stop me?” Fiona wondered aloud. “Is that what he wants? For Sam to find him and stop him? Maybe even kill him?”

“Death by cop? Or in this case, ex-FBI? Could be.” Annie stopped to ponder the possibility. “I actually like that a lot.” She leaned on the back of the chair. “So, Fiona, have you given any thought to trying your hand at profiling? I heard there’s an opening.”

“I thought it was filled. What’s his name?” Fiona frowned.

“Doesn’t matter. He quit. He wasn’t any good anyway,” John told her.

“Anyway, to get back to our actor. Okay, he has Sam’s attention. He has all our attention, though he doesn’t give a flying fuck about the rest of us. It’s Sam he’s challenging. So we have to ask ourselves, to what end?” Annie glanced around the room. “What now?”

“Well, he’s trying to draw Sam out, to engage him,” Fiona began, then stopped. “You said maybe he wants to be stopped, maybe even to be killed. Maybe by Sam’s hand.”

Annie agreed. “So the next question is, what has he done that was so horrible that he deserves to die? I don’t mean these current murders. These are all just means to an end to him. I believe there’s something in his past—way back, maybe—that he feels guilty about.” She turned to Sam. “John and I talked about this earlier this morning. We both know you feel personally
responsible for these murders, but here’s the thing, Sam: this is all about his guilt, not yours. He’s projecting it onto you because he can’t face what he’s done—not what he’s doing now, but something he might have done a long time ago.”

“You’re saying someone he used to know did something that’s haunting him now, but he’s trying to get even with Sam for it? Like, somehow he holds Sam responsible, but only because he can’t admit to himself that he was the responsible party?” Fiona frowned. “Did that make any sense, Annie?”

“It made perfect sense. That’s exactly how I see it. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing how far back we have to go to look for him. We’re going to have to rely on Sam to come up with a few possibilities.”

“Honestly, Annie, I can’t think of anyone.”

“We all have people in our past who we might have injured in some way without even knowing it. It could be someone like that,” John said.

“I’ll give it some thought, but I’ve made it a point all my life to just get along, let others live their lives, not judge. Shit, I can’t even remember the last time I had a real argument with anyone.”

“There’s someone there someplace,” Annie assured him. “I only wish I could help you sniff him out.”

“In the meantime, we have another murder,” Fiona reminded them.

“You didn’t give me any details on the phone,” Sam said.

“That’s what I’m going to do right now.” She passed around several photos of the crime scene. “These were taken by the medical examiner’s office.”

Sam stared at the pictures. The man’s body was dressed all in black and was propped up against a heavy chain fence.

“What’s this in his hands?” he asked.

“It’s a Bible,” Fiona told him. “And that building in the background is the Virginia State Correctional Institute at Calumet. It’s right outside of—”

“Yeah, Sanderson. I get that part. But I don’t get the Bible.” Sam stared at the photo.

“The victim is forty-seven-year-old Kenneth Wilke. He worked at a nearby convenience store,” Fiona said pointedly, “but he’s dressed like a—”

“Like a priest. Minister to the incarcerated,” Sam muttered. “One of the acts of mercy is to minister to prisoners.”

“Right. Wilke worked the late shift. Surveillance cameras show him leaving the store by the back door ten minutes after his shift ended. All the employees park behind the store. Wilke’s car was still there the following day, but he never showed up for work. They called his home number but his girlfriend said she hadn’t seen him since the day before.”

“She hadn’t called the store to find out if he was there?”

“She also works at night. She stocks produce at a local supermarket. She generally gets home before he does, so she hadn’t noticed until the next day that he wasn’t there.”

“So the theory is that he was taken as he exited the building, forced into the killer’s car and driven to …” Sam thought it through. “I’m guessing he wasn’t killed where he was found.”

“Right.” Fiona folded her hands in front of her on
the table. “There’s a field on one side of the prison. The police found an area where the high grass has been tamped down and there are tire tracks leading into the field. They believe the killer drove into the field and got as close to the most remote section of fence as he could without being seen. They found the kill site in the field near where the tire marks stop. They also found a pair of jeans and a white shirt with the name of the convenience store on the front. They figure the killer made the victim change into the black clothes, then strangled him right there. That would have been easier than killing him first, then trying to undress and dress the dead body. The postmortem stab wounds were made after the body was posed at the fence. There’s no evidence the body had been dragged, so we’re figuring he must have picked the victim up and carried him.”

“How big was the victim?”

“Six feet, one hundred eighty pounds.”

Annie let that sink in before stating the obvious. “The man we’re looking for is one big, strong guy.”

“One big strong guy with a big nasty grudge, if your theory is correct,” Sam said.

“Big, strong, dangerous, and holding a grudge. Not a good combination,” Fiona noted.

“So what’s your next move?” John asked her.

“I’m going to Sanderson to see what I can find out about this latest victim.” Fiona turned to Sam. “I’ll give you a call and let you know what I find out.”

“I’m going with you.”

“Sam, you don’t have to do that. I’m sure you must have some very bad memories connected with Sanderson.”

“I’m coming with you,” he said levelly.

“If you’re sure—”

“I’m sure.”

“All right,” Annie said. “We have four deaths. Seven acts of mercy. Three acts left. Anyone know what they are?”

“I know them all. I looked them up.” Fiona ticked them off on her fingers. “We’ve already seen the killer run through feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, shelter the homeless, and this latest, minister to prisoners. The three remaining are heal the sick, clothe the naked, and—”

“Bury the dead,” Sam murmured, remembering, a chill running down his back.

Somewhere long ago, Sam had seen something that had depicted all of the acts, but where and when was locked in his memory. He had the uncomfortable feeling that somehow, that place, that time, was related to the killings. He tried to focus on it, but the image was elusive. He couldn’t call it back up.

Maybe Annie was right. Maybe the killer
was
from his distant past.

Maybe with any real luck, he’d put it together before someone else had to die.

T
he drive back to Virginia with Annie hadn’t proven to be as interesting as Fiona had hoped. She’d wanted to pick the profiler’s brain on a number of topics—starting with Annie’s take on Sam DelVecchio, for one—but no sooner had Fiona turned the key in the ignition than Annie had put her seat all the way back and closed her eyes.